Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Dr. Seuss inspired artwork for his birthday, plus Read Across America and World Read Aloud Day

Today would have been the 111th birthday of Dr. Seuss! In 2012, I celebrated his birthday for the whole month, by creating weekly art inspired by his books. Found them today and thought I'd post them again for fun. I asked myself a series of questions to come up with what to draw from which books. Questions and art shown below:

Q: What if The Cat In The Hat had a brother or sister who liked eating fish?

Q: What if you combined the two Dr. Seuss books, Oh, The
Places You’ll Go!, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish? (You'd get the book: Oh, The Places You'll Fish!)

Here's a close up of the fish driving the car (FYI, the colors in both pictures are exactly the same - like the closeup below - not sure why the one above is different on Blogger!):

Q: What if Horton heard a
Who, and also a What, Where, Why, When, and How? (He’s holding all those
worlds in his trunk, and is a US Marshall offering them witness protection too - apparently I was also inspired by a TV show about WitSec.)

Q: What if Sue (from Fox in Socks) was swamped with sock
orders and had to sew six thousand socks?

Sue sewing socks was my favorite of the group, because it was inspired by Dr. Seuss, but done in my style and with my characters helping Sue. My second favorite is Horton, but they were all fun to do.

Here's closeup of the cow helping Sue with her yarn:

And here's a closeup of the bunny, who is my favorite character from this drawing. Thinking about doing more art with this bunny, and maybe the cow, owl and bird too!

Final Q: What if the green eggs and ham were returned to Sam in exchange for a birthday cake? (Sam is a bit stunned by this development, BTW.)

Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss! All his wacky stories and characters have inspired me since I was a kid, and inspired these drawings too.

Today is also Read Across America Day. Read Across America is the NEA's program to foster a love of reading in children and teens all year long. The theme this year is, Oh the Places You'll Go!

And Wednesday is World Read Aloud Day, which celebrates the importance of reading aloud and sharing stories around the world.

I'm going to read a book to celebrate this week, how about you? Happy reading everyone!

p.s. For those who like to know about art mediums used, the first three images were pen and ink, then colored in Photoshop, image four was re-drawn and colored in Photoshop, and the last image is pencil and ballpoint pen with colored pencil.

Author/illustrator Stephanie Ruble has been making art ever since she could hold a crayon, and making up stories since she learned to talk. She's currently working on new picture books, images for her portfolio, and drawing art for unusual holidays. Thanks for visiting!
Picture Book: Ewe and Aye written by Candace Ryan, Illustrated by Stephanie Ruble - in bookstores now.